(23-12-2014 07:32 AM)Patriot10mm Wrote: I was stationed in Germany. They used to give us military guys safety meetings to teach us what we could and couldn't say in public while we were off base. There were so many restrictions.

Yes, they have some restrictions, but so does the United States. The Freedom of Speech granted by the First Amendmentis not absolute.

Americans can criticize the president. Can't do it there. Insulting someone in Germany can be prosecuted. A man was charged in Germany for saying women should stay in the kitchen. That wouldn't happen in America.

I've been to Germany, and over 75 other countries after 10 years in the U.S. Military. Not one place I visited was even close the America. People from every country in the world are begging to get to America but the list of people trying to leave America is very small.
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That's your personal experience. My personal experience is quite different. The best man from my wedding (and his girlfriend that I had grown really close to) is in Cambridge (after living in Dublin for a while), another groomsman in Paris, and a bridesmaid in Mali. Another groomsman recently returned from Dubai - he was there to make $$$. That's just the bridal party - not even counting the rest of my now estranged friends that have since moved, including one to Guatemala who is LOVING it and another in Germany that won't post in English, fucking ever. The only one that's a missionary is the one in Mali, she keeps going back, and is likely to make Timbuktu her permanent residence. If I had the opportunity to move, I'd take it, depending on the country. Then you have my aunt who lived in Japan in the 80s and 90s, and only came back because my grandmother was sick and then fell in love with an American and stayed. My uncle and his family lived in Zambia and came back to the US for their kids to go to college.

Is my personal experience indicative of lots of people wanting to leave the US? It "feels" that way. I haven't cited any statistics, my feels and anecdote mean shit.

"If there's a single thing that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so." - Lev Grossman

(23-12-2014 07:40 AM)EvolutionKills Wrote: Yes, they have some restrictions, but so does the United States. The Freedom of Speech granted by the First Amendmentis not absolute.

Americans can criticize the president. Can't do it there. Insulting someone in Germany can be prosecuted. A man was charged in Germany for saying women should stay in the kitchen. That wouldn't happen in America.

The people closely associated with the namesake of female canines are suffering from a nondescript form of lunacy.
"Anti-environmentalism is like standing in front of a forest and going 'quick kill them they're coming right for us!'" - Jake Farr-Wharton, The Imaginary Friend Show.

(23-12-2014 07:49 AM)Patriot10mm Wrote: Americans can criticize the president. Can't do it there. Insulting someone in Germany can be prosecuted. A man was charged in Germany for saying women should stay in the kitchen. That wouldn't happen in America.

Note that no behaviour is required to loose one’s freedom of speech. To be prosecuted for voicing strong opinion does not require someone to act in accordance with your opinion but it requires a prosecutor that can imagine someone who is willing to act in accordance with your opinion. So if you say, for instance, that women should be banned to the house and only be allowed to tend to the stove it will lead to prosecution regardless of whether it actually lead someone to imprison his wife in the kitchen as a reaction to what you said or whether it did not (This example is not invented, but taken from a legal case, the guy who argued that women should remain in the house was convicted to pay 1,000 Euros).

Note that no behaviour is required to loose one’s freedom of speech. To be prosecuted for voicing strong opinion does not require someone to act in accordance with your opinion but it requires a prosecutor that can imagine someone who is willing to act in accordance with your opinion. So if you say, for instance, that women should be banned to the house and only be allowed to tend to the stove it will lead to prosecution regardless of whether it actually lead someone to imprison his wife in the kitchen as a reaction to what you said or whether it did not (This example is not invented, but taken from a legal case, the guy who argued that women should remain in the house was convicted to pay 1,000 Euros).

... Though I'd love to see that that writer makes of New Zealand and the Netherlands...

I like how that article pokes the US constitution in while ignoring that of the nation it is writing on. It's just not a complete article without a reference to irrelevant law. Not to mention that "amongst Western democracies" bit; where it seemingly forgets nations like Australia, Netherlands and New Zealand exist.
Or, I guess they aren't actually Western democracies...

The people closely associated with the namesake of female canines are suffering from a nondescript form of lunacy.
"Anti-environmentalism is like standing in front of a forest and going 'quick kill them they're coming right for us!'" - Jake Farr-Wharton, The Imaginary Friend Show.

(23-12-2014 07:32 AM)Patriot10mm Wrote: I was stationed in Germany. They used to give us military guys safety meetings to teach us what we could and couldn't say in public while we were off base. There were so many restrictions.

Yes, they have some restrictions, but so does the United States. The Freedom of Speech granted by the First Amendmentis not absolute.

The US does not ban hate speech. I don't know of any other country in the world that has as much freedom of speech as America. Thanks to the UN and ICCPR most countries in the world now have quasi-Stalinist laws restricting what one can say and sometimes even think. While the US did ratify ICCPR they did so with reservations as to protect freedom.

The doctrine of all freedom loving people must be that speech cannot be limited by the state, no matter how abhorrent that speech may be. Limiting speech is a door that is extremely hard to close once open. You do not want to open that door.

Furthermore, hate speech laws are widely abused here in Canada for ideological purposes. Here is an article from the National Post published in 2008;

Quote:As proposed changes to the Canadian Human Rights Act sit in political limbo, it seems the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) is determined to do its best to discredit itself further as an institution.

In April, a Quebec blogger named Marc Lebuis brought a complaint to the commission over a book published on the Internet by a Montreal-based fundamentalist Muslim, Abou Hammad Sulaiman al-Hayiti. Lebuis claimed that the book exposed gays, Jews, non-Muslims generally and other identifiable groups to "hatred or contempt" under the plain meaning of Section 13 of the act.

Mr. Lebuis' purpose, he admits, was to "test the objectivity of the commission" in light of commission rulings against Christians for publishing equally or less strident language.

The commission failed the test spectacularly. On Dec. 5, CHRC officials told Lebuis that they would not proceed with an investigation of his complaint. They argued that Mr. al-Hayiti was free to say whatever he liked against "infidels," and particularly non-Muslim women (what with their disturbingly

When it comes to radical Muslims, human rights censors suddenly see no evil wanton habits of dress and behaviour!) because they do not constitute an "identifiable group." As for Mr. al-Hayiti's imprecations against groups established as "identifiable," like gays and Jews, the commission reported vaguely that these "do not seem" to meet the criteria for promoting hatred.

The first part of the finding has the tendency of permitting any kind of abusive language to be used against members of a notional majority group by a member of a minority. As for the second, Mr. al-Hayiti's own words raise the question of what a radical Muslim writer could possibly ever do to be found guilty of arousing "hatred or contempt."

Allah, Mr. al-Hayiti warns, has taught that "If the Jews, Christians, and [Zoroastrians] refuse to answer the call of Islam, and will not pay the jizyah [tax], then it is obligatory for Muslims to fight them if they are able." Christianity, in particular, is denounced as a "religion of lies," which is responsible for the West's "perversity, corruption and adultery."

At one point, Mr. al-Hayiti's book refers to "the incredible number of gays and lesbians (may Allah curse and destroy them in this life and the next) who sow disorder upon the Earth and who desire to increase their numbers." In one short passage, this combines a seeming accusation of demonic "recruitment" with an open wish for the complete elimination of homosexuals and a claim that they are a source of social chaos. It is like a mini-compendium of every form of dehumanization, in other words, to which gays and lesbians have ever been subjected. Can you imagine how a Christian who uttered a similar statement would be treated by a human rights commission?

Actually, we don't need to wonder. A few years back, a Christian pastor named Stephen Boissoin printed some negative remarks about gays that were far tamer than those of Mr. al-Hayiti. The result: Alberta's Human Rights Commission smacked him down, declaring that henceforth he "shall cease publishing in newspapers, by e-mail, on the radio, in public speeches or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.

To our knowledge, Reverend Boissoin is the only religious figure anywhere in Canada who is legally barred from talking about homosexuality in his own sermons, in his own house of worship. Not Mr. al-Hayiti, though -- he can slam gays all he likes, "human rights" be damned.

This is part of a pattern that has revealed itself over the last few years. Human rights commissions claim to be agencies that fight "hate" generically. But in fact, they are interested in a very narrow sub-category of alleged hatemonger -- the right-winger accused of homophobia, anti-Muslim bias or some other thoughtcrime. The more unvarnished and explicitly murderous forms of hatred made manifest in the publications of, say, Jew-hating Muslims and Hindu-hating Sikhs are of no interest to the thought police.

In a narrow sense, the CHRC made the right call in this case: We are all in favour of Mr. al-Hayiti--or anyone else--being able to promote any particular interpretation of Islam, or any other religion. The larger problem is that Canada's thought police obey a politically correct double standard.

Section 13 of the Human Rights Act should be abolished: We don't want Canada to be a place where publications are screened for "hatred" by a coterie of bureaucrats. But until those people are properly turfed out of their jobs, perhaps the CHRC could be a little less overt in their bias against conservatism and Christianity.

Ideological censorship should never set foot in America. Leftists can talk all they want about how great Europe and Canada are, but you don't how lucky you are. Americans enjoy freedom that we can only dream of. Leftist national-masochists can hate their own country all they want, but in the end the tree of freedom continue to flourish under the devoted love of patriots.

(23-12-2014 12:35 PM)Res Publica Wrote: Ideological censorship should never set foot in America. Leftists can talk all they want about how great Europe and Canada are, but you don't how lucky you are. Americans enjoy freedom that we can only dream of. Leftist national-masochists can hate their own country all they want, but in the end the tree of freedom continue to flourish under the devoted love of patriots.

God you're trite Power to the people! The Right Wing Nationalists will NEVER be defeated. Forward with the revolution. Hate everyone who is not us!

Slogans. Fuck slogans.

We'll love you just the way you are
If you're perfect -- Alanis Morissette

(06-02-2014 03:47 PM)Momsurroundedbyboys Wrote: And I'm giving myself a conclusion again from all the facepalming.

(23-12-2014 12:35 PM)Res Publica Wrote: Ideological censorship should never set foot in America. Leftists can talk all they want about how great Europe and Canada are, but you don't how lucky you are. Americans enjoy freedom that we can only dream of. Leftist national-masochists can hate their own country all they want, but in the end the tree of freedom continue to flourish under the devoted love of patriots.

The Right Wing Nationalists will NEVER be defeated. Forward with the revolution.

The first part is correct, the right wing has most of the guns in America, and the majority of cops and military lean right. The second part is unnecessary. There is no revolution needed. The right is not trying to change America, the left is.

(23-12-2014 12:44 PM)morondog Wrote: The Right Wing Nationalists will NEVER be defeated. Forward with the revolution.

The first part is correct, the right wing has most of the guns in America, and the majority of cops and military lean right. The second part is unnecessary. There is no revolution needed. The right is not trying to change America, the left is.

The very fact that you believe a society to be a monolythic block that can survive without any change is merely a testament to your stupidity.

(23-12-2014 12:53 PM)Patriot10mm Wrote: The first part is correct, the right wing has most of the guns in America, and the majority of cops and military lean right. The second part is unnecessary. There is no revolution needed. The right is not trying to change America, the left is.

The very fact that you believe a society to be a monolythic block that can survive without any change is merely a testament to your stupidity.